Alan Hollinghurst

Hollinghurst is credited with having helped gay-themed fiction to break into the literary mainstream through his seven novels since 1988.

Alan Hollinghurst studied at Magdalen College and Canford School. The recorded working language is French and English. The field of work recorded is translating activity, translation from French and literary activity. Henry James is recorded as an influence. Residence is recorded at London. Employment is recorded with University College London, Magdalen College and University of Houston. Works named in the authority record are The Swimming-Pool Library, The Folding Star, The Spell and The Line of Beauty. Distinctions recorded are James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Lambda Literary Award, Eric Gregory Award and E.

• Honorific Prefix — Sir • Name — Alan Hollinghurst • Birth Name — Alan James Hollinghurst • Born — 26 May 1954 • Birthplace — Stroud, Gloucestershire, England, United Kingdom • Occupation — Writer, translator • Education — Magdalen College, Oxford (BA, MLitt) • Period — 1975– • Genre — Novel, poem, short story • Notable Works — The Swimming-Pool Library The Folding Star The Spell The Line of Beauty The Stranger's Child The Sparsholt Affair Our Evenings

Hollinghurst was born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, England, only child of bank manager James Hollinghurst, who served in the RAF in the Second World War, and his wife, Elizabeth. He attended Dorset's Canford School. He studied English at Magdalen College, Oxford, receiving a BA in 1975 and MLitt in 1979. His thesis was on works by three gay writers: Ronald Firbank, E. M. Forster and L. P. Hartley. He house-shared at Oxford with future poet laureate Andrew Motion, and was awarded poetry's Newdigate Prize, a year before Motion. In the late 1970s, Hollinghurst lectured at Magdalen, then at Somerville and Corpus Christi. In 1981, he lectured at UCL, and in 1982 joined The Times Literary Supplement, serving as deputy editor from 1985 to 1990. Hollinghurst discussed his early life and literary influences at length in a rare interview at home in London, published in The James White Review in 1997–98.

Hollinghurst won the 2004 Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty. His next novel, The Stranger's Child, made the 2011 Booker Prize longlist. The Guardian has called Hollinghurst "one of the great writers of our time". The Sunday Times has stated "at the sentence level, Hollinghurst remains an English stylist without obvious living equal."

Hollinghurst is gay and lives in London. In 2018, he lived with the non-binary writer Paul Mendez, though the two are now separated. Hollinghurst previously said: "I'm not at all easy to live with. I wish I could integrate writing into ordinary social life, but I don't seem to be able to. I could when I started [writing]. I suppose I had more energy then. Now I have to isolate myself for long periods."

• Illustration — Hollinghurst talks about his novel The Stranger's Child on Bookbits radio.

• The Swimming-Pool Library, 1988, • The Folding Star, 1994, • The Spell, 1998, • The Line of Beauty, 2004, • The Stranger's Child, 2011, • The Sparsholt Affair, 2017, • Our Evenings, 2024,

• "A Thieving Boy" (In Firebird 2: Writing Today. Penguin, 1983) • "Sharps and Flats" (In Granta 43. 1993), was incorporated into Hollinghurst's second novel, The Folding Star • "Highlights" (In Granta 100. 2007)

• Isherwood is at Santa Monica (Sycamore Broadsheet 22: two poems, hand-printed on a single folded sheet), Oxford: Sycamore Press 1975 • Poetry Introduction 4 (ten poems: "Over the Wall", "Nightfall", "Survey", "Christmas Day at Home", "The Drowned Field", "Alonso", "Isherwood is at Santa Monica", "Ben Dancing at Wayland's Smithy", "Convalescence in Lower Largo", "The Well"), Faber and Faber, 1978 • Confidential Chats with Boys, Oxford: Sycamore Press, 1982 (based on the book Confidential Chats with Boys by William Lee Howard, MD, 1911, Sydney, Australia) • "Mud" (London Review of Books, Vol. 4, No. 19, 21 October 1982)

• Bajazet by Jean Racine, Chatto & Windus, 1991, • Bérénice and Bajazet by Jean Racine, Faber and Faber, 2012,

• New Writing 4 (with A. S. Byatt), 1995, • A. E. Housman: Poems Selected by Alan Hollinghurst, Faber and Faber, 2001,

Alan Hollinghurst worked in translating activity, translation from French, literary activity, prose and poetry. He was employed by University College London, Magdalen College and University of Houston. He belonged to Royal Society of Literature. He worked at London.

Alan Hollinghurst is recorded as having received James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Lambda Literary Award and Eric Gregory Award.